The organization and system are of the highest order.  Every one in it is American.  The doctors are the best in Paris.  The nurses and orderlies are both especially trained for the work and volunteers.  The spirit of helpfulness and unselfishness is everywhere apparent.  Certain members of the American colony, who never in their lives thought of any one save themselves, and of how to escape boredom, are toiling like chambermaids and hall porters, performing most disagreeable tasks, not for a few hours a week, but unceasingly, day after day.  No task is too heavy for them or too squalid.  They help all alike—­Germans, English, major-generals, and black Turcos.

There are three hundred patients.  The staff of the hospital numbers one hundred and fifty.  It is composed of the best-known American doctors in Paris and a few from New York.  Among the volunteer nurses and attendants are wives of bankers in Paris, American girls who have married French titles, and girls who since the war came have lost employment as teachers of languages, stenographers, and governesses.  The men are members of the Jockey Club, art students, medical students, clerks, and boulevardiers.  They are all working together in most admirable harmony and under an organization that in its efficiency far surpasses that of any other hospital in Paris.  Later it is going to split the American colony in twain.  If you did not work in the American ambulance you won’t belong.

Attached to the hospital is a squadron of automobile ambulances, ten of which were presented by the Ford Company and ten purchased.  Their chassis have been covered with khaki hoods and fitted to carry two wounded men and attendants.  On their runs they are accompanied by automobiles with medical supplies, tires, and gasolene.  The ambulances scout at the rear of the battle line and carry back those which the field-hospitals cannot handle.

One day I watched the orderlies who accompany these ambulances handling about forty English wounded, transferring them from the automobiles to the reception hall, and the smartness and intelligence with which the members of each crew worked together was like that of a champion polo team.  The editor of a London paper, who was in Paris investigating English hospital conditions, witnessed the same performance, and told me that in handling the wounded it surpassed in efficiency anything he had seen.

Chapter V The Battle Of Soissons

The struggle for the possession of Soissons lasted two days.  The second day’s battle, which I witnessed, ended with the city in the possession of the French.  It was part of the seven days’ of continuous fighting that began on September 6th at Meaux.  Then the German left wing, consisting of the army of General von Kluck, was at Claye, within fifteen miles of Paris.  But the French and English, instead of meeting the advance with a defence, themselves attacked.  Steadily, at the rate of ten miles a day, they drove the Germans back across the Aisne and the Marne, and so saved the city.